


Without All That Bull-

by orphan_account



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Alcohol, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-26
Updated: 2015-01-26
Packaged: 2018-03-09 03:57:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3235415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Idea from bluebeaver-In the 215 podcast Gavin said he fears rejection a lot. And I was thinking, a lot of Mavin fics have him making the first move or being all flirty and initiating nsfw acts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Without All That Bull-

Michael was relatively good at noticing the links between certain things.

Like between Geoff giggling during a Let’s Play and the fact that he was likely fucking with someone or something while they weren’t looking.

Or when Ray’s being oddly quiet, it means he’s very close to winning without the others realising.

But mostly this was about Gavin. He knew, hell the entire office knew, about Gavin’s difficulty with the fear of rejection, so he coped with it by drinking himself beyond stupid before even _considering_ asking someone out on a date. Michael knew this as a fact because he’d seen it happen so many times before. At parties, Gavin would be off-his-face drunk with that goofy Gavin grin on, sidling up to Michael.

He’d be so drunk he’d forget what he was going to ask Michael in the middle of asking it before heading off and asking out a pretty girl that was standing across the room, but he’d do so in that small, defeated way. Michael always thought that had been because he’d been eyeing someone else but they left.

Then Michael found a link. It wasn’t until he realised, after many instances of him missing a party Gavin had been at, that there was a distinct lack of ‘Gavin got laid’ talk in the office and the Brit was never hungover the next day.

Michael noticed that this only happened, that Gavin only ever stayed sober and slept alone when Michael wasn’t at the party.

So he decided to experiment, to find the other side to ‘Gavin doesn’t drink when Michael isn’t there’.

At first, Michael watched Gavin throughout a party, figuring out at what point Gavin would start drinking. He got to parties early just to figure this out, finding out that Gavin started drinking as soon as he spotted Michael. He’d smile, wave and grab a drink before walking over to whoever he’d decided to talk to that night and he wouldn’t approach Michael until he was properly sloshed.

The next was, Gavin, being the flirty bastard he was, always touched Michael. Not horribly inappropriate but enough to be noticeable, making sure Michael’s attention was on him for quite a bit of the time they sat together.

The last thing in this system was, Gavin would open his mouth to say something, stop, then close his mouth and shake his head. Then he’d untangle himself from Michael and go to the prettiest thing at the bar and take her home with him, often without a challenge.

That was the control for this experiment.

Step one: Gavin sees Michael. Step two: Gavin gets drunk. Step three: Gavin wants to ask something of Michael and Step four: Gavin pretends it’s nothing and walks off.

Michael wanted to figure out what the fuck was going on in that skinny British fuck’s mind between steps three and four.

At first he tried keeping Gavin from drinking by making him the designated driver, right after Gavin managed to get his licence of course. Gavin responded with missing step 2 but avoided Michael altogether.

Next he tried only letting Gavin get tipsy. There was nearly the same reaction as the control, except after opening his mouth to ask something, stopping and shaking his head, he stayed with Michael and didn’t take anyone home. So it was something that he was too nervous to ask, more nervous than asking someone to go home with him.

So Michael’s last experiment was to try and keep Gavin from getting to step four.

**_ RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH- _ **

“Come on Gavvers, time to go home,” Michael said with a smile, putting an arm around Gavin’s waist and leading him to the door. Gavin immediately spluttered a response but didn’t fight against Michael all that much as the auburn haired man diverted him from his path towards the pretty brunette at the bar.

The drive home was quiet, Gavin opening his mouth to speak every now and then, like he was a malfunctioning computer, stuck at step three of his coding so just repeating it over and over again until he could go through another step.

When they finally got to Michael’s apartment, not wanting to wake up the Ramseys, Michael did what he thought would help move on past step three to an alternative path.

Get Gavin drunk enough to let him ask whatever it was that he wanted to ask.

“Here, have some more bevs, Gavin,” Michael said, handing the already intoxicated Brit a beer, trying to ignore the guilt gnawing at his gut by taking a sip of his own beer.

“Thanks, my little Michael,” Gavin said, downing half the beer in one go as Michael sat down beside him, turning on the xbox to start up Netflix and try to distract Gavin from the fact that Michael was pretty much pouring alcohol down Gavin’s throat.

“So, what were you going to ask me? You know, every time you’re drunk around me,” Michael asked, an arm along the back of the couch.

“I wasn’t asking you,” Gavin slurred, twirling the contents of his three-past-drunk bottle of beer and barely managing to not spill it. “I was asking Michael,” Gavin said with a dopey little smile on his face at the mention of Michael’s name.

“So who am I?” Michael asked with a quirked eyebrow and Gavin just looked at him like _he_ was the drunk one.

“You’re Ray. Jeeze. Knew you’d be a lightweight,” Gavin said, giggling nearly uncontrollably while Michael just looked on in amusement.

“Yeah, sure. So what were you going to ask Michael?” Michael asked with a small smile and Gavin looked around the living room of Michael’s apartment, as if checking for anyone lurking in the room that might hear his massive secret.

“I was gonna ask if he wanted to be my boyfriend,” Gavin said in a too-loud whisper before sitting back in his chair, nodding with a serious expression on his face while Michael just looked shocked.

“You were gonna ask m-...Michael, out?” Michael asked and Gavin frowned, shaking his head.

“Nooooo. Learn to listen X-Ray. I wanted to ask him to be my _boyfriend_ , not go on a date,” Gavin said, nearly tipping himself over to emphasise ‘boyfriend’.

“There’s a difference?” Michael asked, sipping at his beer. Well, more chugging it because what Gavin said was making his palms sweaty and his heartbeat race.

“Yeeeah. Like...when you ask someone on a date, you go to dinner and you try to impress them with, like your money or your jokes or some bollocks. But I won’t be able to impress him because there’s nothing really impressive about me. So all I can do is ask if he’ll be my boyfriend and hope he’ll like me enough to say yes,” Gavin said with a surprising level of coherency. He didn’t look at Michael throughout his explanation, which made the auburn haired man a little bit glad because he couldn’t hide the blush on his cheeks.

“And there’s this whole dance with dating before you call them your boyfriend. You move closer to them, step by step and hope they won’t step back. I wanna skip that crap and just hold his hand right away, be a total fem and cuddle him all the time and...kiss him without having to deal with all that nervousness and stuff,” Gavin finished, looking at the carpet in front of his feet with a sad smile on his face, it shifting into a look of exhaustion.

“I’m sleepy,” Gavin mumbled to himself, putting his beer bottle on the table in front of him and it took Michael a little too long to realise what Gavin had said.

“Yeah, sure. I’ll uh...I’ll get you a blanket or something,” Michael mumbled, standing up and fetching a blanket and a pillow from his linen closet, returning to find Gavin already passed out and curled up on the couch. Michael just gently lifted Gavin’s head and put the pillow there, threw the blanket over him and walked to his own bedroom, shutting to door and lying down for a night of thinking about what Gavin had said.

**_ RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH- _ **

The next morning, at work, Michael went out of his way to show Gavin affection. After the slightly awkward wake up where Michael realised that the hungover Brit didn’t remember a single sausage from the previous night, including going to Michael’s apartment, the New Jerseyan tried to show Gavin that he didn’t need to get drunk to ask Michael to be with him. Because Michael would absolutely say yes.

Gavin first started noticing something was off when Michael cuddled up to him more. Be it on the couch during game nights at Michael’s apartment or the Ramseys, or just lying on the floor with him after a good little wrestle for a little longer than normal, his arm wrapped around the Brit’s shoulders. Michael would act like it was the most natural thing in the world but Gavin knew something was different.

Then there was the hand thing. Like, Michael would brush against his hand constantly or run his fingers through Gavin’s hair, saying something about trying to make it look just a little nicer but Michael never did that before so that set off another red flag in Gavin’s head. There were even occasions where Michael would take his hand, intertwining their fingers to hold their joined hands up after a Team Nice Dynamite victory, just to let them sit on Michael’s thigh, long after needed, not that holding hands to celebrate a victory was ever needed, or done before.

But those red flags paled in comparison to the most recent thing.

On those nights where Gavin would hang out at Michael’s with the American’s arm around Gavin’s shoulders and the Brit pretty much sitting in Michael’s lap, Michael would congratulate Gavin on a score in the game by kissing his neck. Granted, he couldn’t reach anywhere else so it wasn’t really the placement that was the odd thing but the kissing itself. When it first happened, Gavin squeaked and jumped and Michael tensed. He relaxed a little while after, repeating the action when Gavin scored but this time with a greatly reduced reaction.

Yeah, sure, Gavin thought it was odd, well in comparison to how they behaved around each other a few months ago but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t like it. It did help him feel a little more courageous on those nights, most of the time being completely sober when he opened his mouth to ask Michael that question that he’d been trying to ask for ages.

Of course, he still wasn’t brave enough to get the first word out but still, being sober when he decided to attempt to ask was a great leap for him and his shyness about asking someone to be with him.

“Hey, Michael?” Gavin said while Michael drove a ghost through an enemy base, looking at Gavin as soon as he paused the game.

“Yeah? What’s up Gavvers?” Michael asked, the hand he had on Gavin’s waist running over his hip a little, thumb brushing over the exposed sliver of skin there. Gavin shivered at the feeling, looking down at the controller in his lap before mumbling about needing lots of beer and getting up, trying for the fridge before he felt a hand around his wrist, tugging him down into Michael’s lap so their lips were inches from each other.

“Gavin, you don’t have to get drunk to ask me something. Just ask,” Michael said, nuzzling Gavin’s neck as his arms snaked around the younger man’s waist.

“I uh...I w-wanted to ask if you’d...” Gavin trailed off, neck arching back when Michael placed an encouraging kiss there.

“If I’d?” Michael prompted, looking up at Gavin with an expectant look on his face.

“If you’d...if you’d be my...boyfriend,” Gavin finished softly, too focused on Michael’s lips to be nervous about anything.

“Gavin,” Michael said with a serious expression on his face that made Gavin tense a little in Michael’s arms. “I’d love to be your boyfriend,” Michael whispered, pressing a light kiss to Gavin’s lips that made the Brit melt.

So Michael helped Gavin get what he wanted. They skipped the bullcrap.

The held hands right away. They were total girls and cuddled all the time

And kissed without having to deal with all that bullshit.


End file.
